life: bad behavior

i've been sitting here watching the little text bar blink in a new post for the last 10 minutes.

i keep glancing at the tv, and then laying my head back against the couch & closing my eyes. 'up' is on. mason is playing out the fight scene between the two old men. i get why everyone likes this movie, but i'm not sure i do. i hate the beginning. thought it was awful the first time we watched it. i remember thinking to myself, you start off an animated kids movie by killing off the poor old guys wife in the first 5 minutes?

not cool.

is it real? is it life? absolutely. but i guess i'm living with this notion, that as you grow up the world changes on you, so you should be able to cling to this magical-nothing-goes-wrong, all-happy-endings thing as long as possible. grown up life is full of enough sadness. i don't need my 7 year old stressing out about death. not just yet... well, not anymore than he already is.

i hate the 'mama, i don't want you to die' statements. the pleading 'mama, please say you & dada & nana & papa & uncle ricky, etc...won't die' it KILLS me. kills me, because i can vividly recall being 5, and my great grandfather passing away on christmas eve. i remember waking up in my purple, unicorn wonderland & crying out to my parents. i remember telling them at 5 years old that i didn't want them to die. i don't remember what they told me, but, i'm guessing it wasn't anything that comforted me, because i'm sure i'd remember it to tell my own kid. not that i can fault them for not knowing what to say. i don't know what to say... what do you say? i hesitate to admit this, but i've never found the heaven bit all that comforting. i'm selfish, i want my loved ones to live forever. death is something i still struggle to accept myself, i'm completely inept at helping him.

i sort of feel like the worst version of my mama-self these days. i couldn't wait to be able to stay at home during the summers with mason... and now as this first one comes to a close, i am SO ready for it to be over. that makes me sad & very very ashamed. i am tired. not just tired, but absolutely exhausted. i am worn out clear through to my bones.

we haven't been getting out of the house much, and maybe that's part of the problem. but the truth is, when i think about heading out with these two in tow, i just want to curl up into the fetal position and rock myself to sleep. okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration.... it's more like i just feel emotionally wiped when i even consider it.

we have gone out, don't get me wrong. in the last few weeks i've teetered between extreme cases of cabin-fever & thoughts of never letting my kids out of the house into public again. i've had to go out though, and every time i come home i feel like i've been torn into 13,000 little bits and the pieces scattered to the wind. it's hard to form a cohesive thought about a craft project, or a dinner menu, or what mason already has in the way of school clothes, when one kid is wandering off on his own, finding every single potentially lethal object to weild as a sword & swing as innocent bystanders try to duck for cover & the other is either screaming at you because his teeth hurt, or because he wants more veggie sticks, or because he just doesn't want to sit anymore.

and i usually end up with a day like yesterday.

where i foolishly thought that, since the hubs was working this weekend, that it would somehow 'just be easier' to haul both kids by myself to walmart to pick up a few groceries & the rest of mason's school supplies, versus waiting for this weekend, where shopping was tax free, but the crowds would be INSANE.

silly me. just try to picture it with me okay? first you need to know my state of consciousness when i decided on this crazy plan.

night before last the hubs got called out to work at 1130pm. i, being the new-found scaredy-cat i am (seriously, ever since the babe was born, i've been a chicken. on second thought, it could have to do with the fact that my car was broken into at night a week before he was born), can't go to bed without the hubs home. i don't like being unconscious & home alone. so i stayed up. until 2am, when i couldn't have held my eyelids open with a toothpick, mainly because i wouldn't have been able to stay awake long enough to get them in place. so i go to bed, you know what's coming right..., i go to bed only to have the dude wake me up at 10 minutes to 5am, claiming he has a stomach ache. he tells me he feels like he's going to throw up. i tell him to go to the bathroom instead of hovering 5 inches from my face, which happens to be on my pillow, which i'd like to keep free of upchucked pizza from dinner. before i can make myself get out of bed, he's in the bathroom in the hall & i can hear the sounds of pee trickling into the toilet. i come around the corner & into the doorway just in time for him to smile & do something that only little boys & guys think is funny. you know what i'm talking about right? do i have to say it? he let one rip. turns out, he wasn't going to vomit, but he was going to make me WANT to. stomach issue resolved, i got him back in bed, and headed back to mine.

i tried to go back to sleep. but i was already too awake, and my brain started it's morning run-down of my to-do list. when, 15 minutes later, it was clear my brain wasn't going to shut up, despite my demands.. i turned the tv on. usually the noise helps me shut down & fall back to sleep. no such luck. so with essentially 2 1/2 hours of sleep i got up & started knocking things off my to-do list. that's of course when i decided yesterday was the most perfect day ever for school shopping, and i think i even patted myself on the back for being sooooo smart to think ahead & not leave the shopping for the busy tax-free weekend.

before we even got inside the store i was exhausted. did i mention i live in hell sunny florida? heat, check. humidity, triple check. (i cringe when i think of the hubs working out in this. & then i make him a big glass of sweet tea when he comes home) because i was already certain i wouldn't make it even another hour without a giant shot of caffeine, i headed straight for the mcdonalds inside the store. i totally bribed mason to stay in the cart (and out of arms reach from picking up lunch boxes which he would inevitably turn into boxing gloves) with a smoothie. the babe seemed like he was going to crash out, so i heaved his carrier + 23lb body inside & put him in the front of the cart. it wasn't until we were far enough away from the carts that i wouldn't even consider going back, that i realized the cart had a thousand pieces of stray string wrapped around one wheel & had the turning capabilities of a dumptruck with a wheel missing. annndddd it had 75lbs of kiddo plopped in it.

we didn't even get INTO the school supplies before the babe started screaming like someone was poking him in the eye. so i took him out & tried to maneuver the cart with one arm. i started reading off the list & pushing the cart close enough to the shelves so that the dude could pick whatever it was up from the shelf & put it into the cart himself. worked good for the first aisle & then it quickly became obvious that i wasn't the only one who wanted to avoid the tax free crowd. between the bum wheel, my one handed maneuvering, the extra 50lb weight in the cart, and the ratio of carts to people, it wasn't long before it was obvious i was going to have to resign my notion of keeping mason safely trapped in the cart, & have him get out and push. which proved useful at first, as one pull on a 70 page spiral notebook had a waterfall of notebooks pouring off the shelf and onto the floor.

after we got those picked up, the dude resumed his normal shopping routine & took off at the sight of a box full of dvd's of the movie 'rio'. as he begged me to buy a copy & i ordered him to come back & push the cart. i stood there, sweat rolling down my back, baby drooling all over my shoulder while he pulled at single strands of my hair chosen precisely so that  they would inflict the maximum amount of pain on my scalp, with minimal effort exerted on his part, staring as mason directly disobeyed me & continued to stand there looking at the movies.

i wanted to yank him by his ear over to where i was. i silently cursed at myself because my problem with him is of my own creation. i know this because he doesn't do it to his father, and yet, i haven't the foggiest idea about how i did it. (the hubs swears he is pushing me, testing my limits right now.)

after we finished picking up the rest of what he needed & headed towards the grocery store, i had to stop at least 3 times to turn around & back track to find where he had gone off to. still holding the babe & pushing the cart with the bum wheel no less. the caffeine didn't help my energy level, & if anything the surge of it made my irritation at the situation that much worse. with all amounts of whining & pleading ignored, i made him get back in the cart. i pushed through the grocery section as fast as i could. stopping long enough to put the babe back into his carrier as my arms had gone waaay beyond fatigue, and bordered on shutting down completely if i contemplated holding him even one second longer. i had the pleasure of idle whining to accompany me, coming in the way of mason swearing every kid was laughing at him & making fun of the fact he was in the shopping cart. i acknowledged him long enough to remind him his poor choices landed him in the cart & that maybe he should consider how he feels now the next time he thinks he can go on his own little adventure through the store. ya, so much for the more logical, who cares what people think lesson right then.

fast forward an hour. we're home, having barely made it back to the house without falling asleep behind the wheel. i steal a few precious moments while the babe is still sleeping in his carrier, praying that mason can control himself to be quiet long enough that i can make it through unloading the bags, going to the bathroom & getting dinner in the oven, without waking him up. it's a miracle, but he succeeds. i hope i thanked him, but i honestly can't be sure.

another half an hour, it's 6. the hubs isn't home yet. the babe is fed & is in the tub playing, with mason hanging around the tub as my life-guard & poop-patrol. i'm in the hallway watching them, stepping back & forth trying to field the sudden onslaught of phone calls, trying to hear over their voices & the falling water all echoing around the bathroom. my mother in law calls the house.. bad news about the hubs grandfather. my mom calls my cell, probably wondering if i'm showing up for zumba. (HA! who needs zumba i pushed a 50lb kid around in a 3 wheeled shopping cart all while holding a 23lb baby!) i ignore the call with a text saying i'll call her later, & before i hit send she's calling the house while i'm still on the phone with my mother in law. then my aunt is calling me back on my cell & my mother in law is telling me about my husband's grandmother's next series of hoops to find out if she has cancer. i try to send my aunt a text & before i can hit send mason's yelling that rance pooped in the bathtub AGAIN. 5th or 6th time in the last week & a half. (and never even once before this!) i run in with the the phone to my ear, trying to hear my mother in law over rance screaming because he doesn't want to get out of the tub & mason asking me how i'm going to get the poop out of the bathtub.

'same way as the last five times mason'
'aren't you glad i was sitting here watching him so i could tell you he did it'
'yes buddy, thank you for telling me so i could get him right out of the dirty water'
'it's good right, that i was sitting here, so i could tell you & he couldn't eat it again, right?'
'yes buddy'
'cause eating poop is grosser than taking a bath with it, right?'
'uhm, it's all gross son'

insert screaming baby between our dialogue & my mother in law laughing as i recount the episode last week where in a split second the babe had a terd (sorry, but such is the glamorous life of a mama) in his mouth & i yanked him out of the water, splashing disintegrated poop over both of us & hung him over the sink to finger swipe the feces from his mouth, sticking my finger so far down his throat he was gagging, but not stopping because i was more comfortable with the thought of accidentally making him puke than i was with him swallowing crap.

i handed the phone over to mason to talk to her while i all but hog-tied rance to the changing table to get a diaper & pj's on him, with him still screaming at me, again, like i was poking him in the eye.

& then i accidentally hung up on my mother in law while trying to see who was calling because mason wouldn't stop complaining that the phone was 'beeping'.

& in a split second all the drama was over. the babe was in bed. the oven timer went off & the hubs walked in the door as i was trying to figure out how the heck to work the caller id on the phone to find & call my mother in law back. i must have looked perplexed as i stared down at the phone because he asked me what was wrong... pretty sad when you are so completely exhausted you forget how to work your phone, right?

so...

it was a difficult day in a seemingly endless string of so-so or BAD days. i feel my will & boundaries being nudged & poked & examined invisibly. i worry that i don't have the right tools to guide mason. i wonder if there was something that i did wrong with mason that i'm not figuring out & so i'm doomed to repeat it with rance.

maybe i'm just tired. maybe i'm a little burned out.

it's oddly comforting when you haphazardly stumble on something you need at the very moment you come across it. this morning it was a new blog. a new to me blog with the same kind of 'i'm failing miserably at parenting right now' kind of post. a well-written post that makes you laugh & cry & shake your head because you absolutely, positively get it & are living it. right now. thank you http://www.themommytherapy.com/

if you could use an injection of humor & a break from the sunshine & rainbows for just a bit.. go check out her blog. i seriously about cried laughing at a recipe she left for her husband.. milk-out-of-your-nose funny. no joke.

xo-k

eta: i can't believe i left out the best part (haha). had i not been holding rance & pushing the cart with the bum wheel, i would have whipped out my phone & added to the galleries at people of walmart. 40-ish, barefoot, overweight, bra-less, barely dressed woman, with no front teeth, pulls all but her aerola out of the neck of her shirt to scratch herself. can't you just picture it? classy, no?